The Old Hume Highway History Begins with a Road

The Old Hume Highway History begins with a road Routes, towns and turnoffs on the Old Hume Highway Foreword It is part of the modern dynamic that, with They were propelled not by engineers and staggering frequency, that which was forged by bulldozers, but by a combination of the the pioneers long ago, now bears little or no needs of different communities, and the paths resemblance to what it has evolved into ... of least resistance. A case in point is the rough route established Some of these towns, like Liverpool, were by Hamilton Hume and Captain William Hovell, established in the very early colonial period, the first white explorers to travel overland from part of the initial push by the white settlers Sydney to the Victorian coast in 1824. They could into Aboriginal land. In 1830, Surveyor-General not even have conceived how that route would Major Thomas Mitchell set the line of the Great look today. Likewise for the NSW and Victorian Southern Road which was intended to tie the governments which in 1928 named a straggling rapidly expanding pastoral frontier back to collection of roads and tracks, rather optimistically, central authority. Towns along the way had mixed the “Hume Highway”. And even people living fortunes – Goulburn flourished, Berrima did in towns along the way where trucks thundered well until the railway came, and who has ever through, up until just a couple of decades ago, heard of Murrimba? Mitchell’s road was built by could only dream that the Hume could be convicts, and remains of their presence are most something entirely different. visible in the sections of road, bridge, stockade and graveyard preserved at Towrang. Most of In fact, however, in mid-2013 the Hume really did its travellers were pastoralists or their servants, become something different, when the final bypass both often former convicts, and what drew them at Holbrook opened. In a historic achievement of to the ‘vast southwards’ as 1850s real estate which Australia can be justifiably proud, Sydney agents called it was the expansive open forests and Melbourne were finally linked by a continuous and grasslands plains of Argyle, the Monaro and dual carriageway highway, unbroken by traffic the Murrumbidgee. Later the discovery of gold lights or town speed restrictions. made this travelling population multicultural – And yet – let’s face it – what came with that slick European opportunists and scholars, black and modernity was also a certain dullness too. I was white Americans, columns of Chinese diggers, as first reminded of that late last year when, on a well as the increasing number of Australian-born whim, I pulled off the soporific Hume to have settlers’ children seeking their own fortunes. After lunch at Gunning. Suddenly, from being lost on gold fever there was a new wave of small-holders bland bitumen that never changed from one drawn by the opportunities of Robertson’s land kilometre to the next, I was back in a real town, acts, aimed at breaking up the large land-holdings with a real history, and real people! Same with of the squatter elite. Many of them came and Glenrowan just last month. How many people who left within a generation, while the remaining whizz past on the Hume just 300 metres away, large pastoral and agricultural estates created know that the place where Ned Kelly made his last the golden age of late 19th century Australian stand is just beyond yonder clump of trees? You farming. The main streets of Albury, Gundagai, pull off the Hume as it is now, and suddenly 1880 Yass and Goulburn are testament to how wealthy is right there before you! rural Australia was at this time. Anyone who has driven the old Hume, meandering The rich agriculturalists did not care for the road from town to town, cruising down their main – they lobbied hard for the railway. The Great streets, winding around hills, ducking under and Southern Road was left to languish, bogging over railway lines will know its glorious secret – it bullock wagons to their axles and crippling horses. was never a highway except in name. Rather, it New South Wales jealously guarded its economy linked inland cities, towns, villages, hamlets and from Victorian encroachment and allowed its dots on maps – for the early roads went not where southern roads to languish at the same time as they should, but only where they could. investing in the rail connection back to Sydney. B Roads and Maritime Services NSW And then just before the end of the century, as the an unintended consequence best described by colonies were beginning to think of themselves Asa Wahlquist in her excellent 1996 SMH column as part of a greater federated whole, along came Take a byway, not a highway as ‘an increase in the the pushbike. Truly! In all seriousness, the humble Great Divide between city and rural Australia … pushie transformed the way that we began to the city drivers cruise benignly by, the texture of think of roads and distance. From the 1880s rural life hidden from their gaze’. bicycle clubs began to form, fanning out across In making a better, faster, safer and more reliable the landscape in search of what The Bulletin was route between Sydney and Melbourne we have telling them was the ‘real’ Australia. Berrima, progressively chopped off bits of the old road dying a slow death after being bypassed by the alignment. These are now little billabongs of railway line, became a favoured destination, as history, snippets of Australia that have dodged did many other towns. The cyclists made maps, the pressure of early 21st century traffic. Each of the first decent maps for any road users. Joseph them tells a bit of a story, and in this tour guide Pearson in NSW and the Victorian George the NSW Roads and Maritime Services (RMS) Broadbent were enthusiastic touring cyclists and has asked the locals to tell us what is important both developed major map publishing enterprises about the history of their area. Each little piece – a well before cars appeared. They lobbied for town bypass, a section of winding road, a historic improvements to roads and signage – in 1903 bridge, a hilly ascent – is part of the bigger story Broadbent was one of the founding members of the Hume and southeastern Australia. of the Royal Automobile Club of Victoria – and improved the conditions for the first motorists. RMS and its ancestors the Roads and Traffic Authority and the Department of Main Roads By the 20th century cars were beginning to take have built an engineering marvel of which we over, offering freedom, speed and adventure. can be very proud. It’s quick and it’s safe, but this A straggling line of roads between Sydney guide book encourages those with some spare and Melbourne was dedicated as the Hume time to venture into an older world where travel Highway a century after Hume and Hovell’s trek. was an experience, not to be rushed, and where Improvements were slow in coming, despite more you felt part of the surroundings, for better or people owning cars, and trucks becoming heavier worse. Take this book, get your navigator to and carrying a greater share of freight. Although guide you off the highway, and rediscover country drivers had long given up scarves and goggles, bakeries and cafes, old homesteads, convict some sections of the road were unsealed until handiwork, colonial architecture, coaching inns 1940, and other sections were narrow, steep and and countless other delights. You can start with winding two-lane road. Petrol stations sprang up Gunning’s Merino Café ... along the route, testament to the risks of taking on such a journey without a mechanic at regular I commend this book to you, and am honoured to intervals. Travellers became essential to the write its foreword. livelihood of many towns. Fast-forward to the present. The Hume is a dual carriageway ribbon of engineered concrete and steel, and after leaving Sydney it now avoids all towns. Some of these towns have benefited from the removal of through traffic; for others the jury is still out. We can now travel more than a hundred kilometres every hour, once a week’s slog for a loaded bullock wagon. And we do it in climate-controlled steel cocoons with the music of our choice in the background. (Dylan, seeing as Peter FitzSimons you ask.) We no longer have to stop because our Neutral Bay, May 2013 engine has exploded, a herd of cattle is blocking the road or to find our way. That’s great progress but we’ve lost touch with the experience of travel, the scent of the bush, and the taste of country baking. As the road has been improved, it has had The Old Hume Highway – History begins with a road C About this self-guided tour Linking the nation’s two largest state capitals, the Fortunately, however, many sections of the old Hume Highway is the most important highway in road alignment remain in active use today. Some Australia. With the opening of the Holbrook Bypass former sections now form one of the carriageways in 2013, the route completed its evolution from its of the new dual carriageway road (eg north of bullock track origins into a modern dual carriageway Goulburn; south of Tarcutta) while other sections highway. are important regional roads serving now-bypassed towns and cities (eg Goulburn, Yass, Albury). The Hume Highway has its own rich history, interwoven into the story of the young Colony’s This self-guided tour identifies a selection of those expansion.

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